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Interesting Things

Posted in Miscellany, New experiences by Anne

One of the things I like best about being connected on the internet is following links to all sorts of interesting things. Sometimes I discover blog articles, YouTube clips, art or music sites, political media, food articles…It’s an interesting world out there, and I know I’m only exploring a tiny fraction of it.

Here are some of the recent interesting things I’ve found:

From @FranchiseKing: “Here’s what a TRILLION dollars looks like” at PageTutor.com. WOW!

From Gary Price’s Resource Shelf Newsletter: This week’s issue was all about statistics, and I found A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009 especially interesting from the blog Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. Here’s some highlights:

  • Nielsen Online shows that Social networks and blogs are now the 4th most popular online activity ahead of personal email, Member communities are visited by 67% of the global online population, time spent is growing at 3 times the overall internet rate, accounting for almost 10% of all internet time, PDF, Nielsen Online, March
  • 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria. Facebook is used in more than 35 different languages and 170 countries and territories. Source: Mark Zuckerberg, Jan 7, 2009
  • 175mm users, with 600k daily growth of users, with the fastest growing segment “45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.” Inside Facebook, Feb 15th, 2009.
  • On LinkedIn: “The site’s traffic is up in the recession. It hit 36 million members last Monday and is adding them at a rate of about one member per second. According to ComScore, it’s gone from about 3.6 million unique monthly visitors a year ago to 7.7 million today, Adage, March 2
  • According to Compete, the growth rate for Twitter was 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December 2008, in the start of 2008, Twitter had only around 500,000 unique monthly visitors. Source: Mashable/Compete, Jan 9, 2009
  • Demographics of Twitter: Lots of stats here: 11% of online adults use Twitter or update their status online
  • Comscore data shows that “In February, 4 million people in the U.S. visited the site, up from 2.6 million the month before, according to the latest data from comScore. That represents a 55 percent month-over-month growth rate, compared to 33 percent growth in each of the two months prior.” Comscore, March

And this last item is just too cute! From @Amy2boys on Twitter “This is not my kid or my dog, but I had to pass it along!” Check it out.

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Who’s drinking coffee?

Posted in Coffee Service, Miri Market, research by Anne

Since making the decision to start our coffee service business, I’ve been doing some research (of course!) on coffee consumption. One very interesting site is The National Coffee Association of USA, Inc.

Here are some of the more interesting highlights from their National Coffee Drinking Trends 2008 study:

17% of the adult population consumed a gourmet coffee beverage on a daily basis in 2008
compared  with 14% in 2007.

• In 2007, past-day consumption of coffee surpassed that of soft drinks for the first time. While the gap narrowed in 2008, daily consumption of coffee is still directionally higher.

18 to 24 year olds are becoming serious coffee drinkers. In 2005, only 26 percent of young adults in that age bracket considered themselves coffee drinkers. By 2007, that figure was up to 37%, making the 18-24 year old coffee market the fastest growing segment of the market. Older adults, in the 40 to 59 year old bracket, are also big coffee drinkers. This age group increased from 59 percent to 61 percent over the previous year, and those age 60 and over report the most coffee consumers - 74 percent of adults in that age bracket reported that they drink coffee every day.

• Consumption of cups per day by consumers age 18-24 continued to trend higher in 2008. Young adults who drank coffee consumed an average of 3.2 cups per day as compared with 3.1 in 2007, a significant increase over 2005’s level of 2.5 cups per day.

So, coffee consumption is going up, but what about the economy? Coffee houses aren’t doing so well these days, are they? The International Coffee Organization released a report in February on the “World Economic Crisis and the Coffee Sector”:

Early reports show that food sales are holding up better than those of non-food
products.  It seems that big chains are competing by cutting prices rather than losing market
share or seeing the volume of sales decrease, even at the expense of profits.  In the developed
country markets of North America, Europe and Japan, which account for approximately
58% of world consumption, coffee is a staple good that represents only a small fraction of
consumer spending.  The information available suggests that coffee consumption in these
markets is holding up well.  Instead of limiting overall intake, consumers are more likely to
shift from out-of-home to in-home consumption and from higher cost products to cheaper
brands.  This trend to less expensive products is corroborated by the strong results reported
by discount food retailers and by reduced earnings in the speciality coffee sector in the last
quarter of 2008.

Increasing coffee consumption, especially among young adults, bodes well for the future of the coffee industry, despite the downturn in the economy. These coffee-drinkers know a good cappuccino when they taste it, and our Miri Market coffee service will allow businesses to offer barista-style coffee drinks to their employees and clients for a fraction of the coffee house price - a great thing in this economy.

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We Don’t Know Enough to be Pessimistic

Posted in Coffee Service, Miri Market, New experiences by Anne

A French philosopher, said that “to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly” (Henri Louis Bergeson.) I believe that is an accurate description of my business endeavors. Change, maturity, re-creation.

Clearly this is not an economy to manufacture and try to sell non-essential decorative merchandise, as I started out to do with Miri Market. Although I have not given up on that idea, I have definitely put those dreams on hold.

But Miri Market still exists, my legal business entity, with the ability to go on creating itself endlessly, as in the quote above. “Miri” means to be amazed, to marvel, to wonder at. It is from the language Esperanto, an international language based on words common to the chief European languages. For example, mira in Spanish means sight; intention; just look. Miracolo in Italian means miracles; wonder. And as a girl’s name (Latin, Slavic, Hindi) Miri means ‘wonderful’; ‘peace’; ‘prosperous’. Can you think of better connotations for a business name?

So it is to marvel and wonder at that my husband and I were presented with a business opportunity that - yes, even in these uncertain times - we decided to seize. David and I together will be working on a small service business. Our website, and this blog, is being reworked to reflect our new venture.

Miri Market coffee service - using state-of-the-art gourmet coffee machines, stocked with the finest coffee and backed by a committment to service and responsibility - makes barista-style coffee drinks available any time at your business for your employees and/or clients.

Our system grinds and brews each coffee drink in 30 seconds flat. At the push of a button a cup of delicious freshly ground and brewed specialty coffee is yours to savor. Miri Market coffee service allows your employees and/or clients to enjoy the flavor, cost and convenience benefits of coffee house drinks at a fraction of coffee house prices.

On the one hand, it seems crazy to jump into a new business when the bad economic news is piling up around us like dead leaves in the fall. Yet we made our decision quite quickly to do this. We’ve always wanted to work together, and this business seems to have the right requirements of each of our strengths and expertise. It is a simple business, a delicious business, that we can run to our standards of taste and responsibility.

Hazel Henderson is a futurist and economist, and the author of several books. In 2007 she started EthicalMarkets.tv for public television to showcase video of people and organizations around the world with socially responsible endeavors. She has said, “If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.”

So I guess that in these uncertain times, David and I simply don’t know enough to be pessimistic. We’re going to give it a whirl!

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Blog Action Day - POVERTY and Our Deficit of Hope

Posted in Miscellany by Anne

“Today, October 15th, bloggers everywhere are publishing posts that discuss poverty in some way. By all posting on the same day we aim to change the conversation that day, to raise awareness, start a global discussion and add momentum to an important cause.

Every blogger has a unique voice, audience and perspective. By speaking to their readers on topic about an important issue we can discuss global issues like poverty in a new and hugely multi-faceted way. And from discussion springs action.”

This is my contribution to the conversation.

I have never been poor. I was raised in an “upper middle-class” family of well-educated parents. My father was sent to work in Europe for a time, so I even had the benefits of gaining an international world view - living in Brussels for five years and learning a second language, French. By the simple accident of birth I do not know what it’s like to be really poor, truly hungry, utterly hopeless.

I do read, however, and over the years both fiction and non-fiction literature has given me glimpses into multi-faceted poverty around the world: the bleak african-american experience through the eyes of escaped slave Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings or There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotiowitz; the poverty and harsh reality of the Chinese woman’s experience through Amy Tan’s books; the ghetto existence in apartheid-era Johannesburg in Kafir Boy by Mark Jones; the cultural poverty of women in the middle east in such books as Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks, or Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson; memoirs of growing up in extreme poverty in Ireland through Frank McCourt’s Angelas Ashes, or in the United States The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Some common themes running through all these stories is the constant struggle required to survive against the forces of poverty, the yearning for dignity in the worst of circumstances, and most of all, that some maintained a sense of hope that they would make it, trusted that things would be better. It amazes me time and time again how, out of hopeless circumstances, individuals rise out of poverty and misery because somehow they are able to maintain a sense of self-worth that remains uncowed, unbeaten in the face of so many forces designed to tear them down. Hope is vital for those living in poverty.

The necessity of hope does not merely stretch geographically to humans around the globe, it stretches throughout time, with recorded thoughts on the importance of hope as far back as the 400’s from Pelagius, a monk who said, “There is no worse death than the end of hope,” to Napoleon Bonaparte said, “A leader is a dealer in hope,” and even to Dr. Martin Luther King who said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

Recent coverage during the Olympic games revealed a current sense of optimism in China. The International Herald Tribune had an article in July about the recent Pew Global Attitudes survey.

Buoyed by years of extraordinary growth and with the promise of the Olympic Games just ahead, the Chinese hold strikingly positive views of their national economy and of the direction their country is heading, ranking first in both measures among 24 countries recently surveyed. They were almost universally optimistic about prospects for the Games, which open Aug. 8.

“This is clearly a nation that sees itself as ascendant, and that leads to tremendous satisfaction with the way things are going nationwide, even though the people are still struggling on an individual level,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the survey.

Eighty-six percent of the Chinese surveyed said they were content with the country’s direction, up from 48 percent in 2002 and a full 25 percentage points higher than the next highest country, Australia. And 82 percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national economy, up from 52 percent.

By comparison, only 23 percent of Americans surveyed said they were satisfied with the country’s direction and only 20 percent said the U.S. economy was good.

Except for Spain, which placed fourth at 50 percent, the peoples of major European countries were far from content. Only about 3 in 10 British, French and Germans expressed satisfaction.

The survey also revealed Chinese concerns about rising food prices and disparity in income, but it is notable that although they individually may be struggling, their sense of the rising economy has affected their optimism.

Did the lack of confidence in the economy by Americans and most Europeans reflect an innate sense of the looming economic crisis in which we now find ourselves? We hear much talk that this crisis reflects a crisis of confidence. This survey shows that the crisis of confidence started long before the crash, and we have a long way to go to restore it.

I am currently doing some reading on the issue of Globalization, and in Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat” he says, “Too often, we have antipoverty debates but not proentrepreneurship debates. The inspirational power of a local business success story is incalculable: There is no greater motivator for the poor than looking at one of their own who makes it big and saying, “If she can do it, I can do it.”

Conversely, there is no greater de-motivator as when we in the U.S. see more and more foreclosure signs diminishing healthcare security, and real loss of wealth. A sobering article in July by Market Watch reports on the findings of a major new national opinion survey conducted for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Every Child Matters Education Fund (ECMEF) showing “…the United States at or near the bottom of most key child well-being indicators when compared to other leading industrialized nations. The ECMEF report also shows extremely wide variations in child well-being among the 50 states.”

The new edition of ECMEF’s “Homeland Insecurity” report shows that certain states - including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, New Mexico and Nevada - are consistently at or near the very bottom of the list of states on key child well-being indicators, while other states - including Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota and Washington state - fare better, but still fall far short of the top G8 nations in the health and safety of children. As “Homeland Insecurity” notes: “…within the U.S. itself, wide gaps in child well-being exist: compared to the states with the best outcomes, children in the bottom states are three times as likely to live in poverty, five times as likely to be without health insurance, eight times as likely to be incarcerated, and three times as likely to die before their fourteenth birthday… . The U.S. ranks last among the rich democracies on the two most important health measures — infant mortality and longevity - even though we spend much more on medical care.”

Voters are pessimistic about the future of the nation’s children. When asked whether today’s children in the United States will grow up better off or worse off than people are now, 45 percent believe they will be worse off while only 28 percent say they will be better off, a six point drop from a survey the Every Child Matters Education Fund released in 2003. A solid majority of Democrats (56 percent worse off, 20 percent better off) and near majority of swing voters (48 percent worse off, 22 percent better off) say that children will grow up worse off than people today, while Republican are more optimistic (44 percent better off, 25 percent worse off).
If a majority of us do not see a better future for our children, then we not only have a deficit economy, we have a deficit of hope.
Fareed Zakaria has a great interview with Tavis Smiley about his recent book, The Post-American World. It lays out in blunt terms how the landscape has changed. The rest of the world is rising, and we seem to be staying flat. There are 124 countries in the world that are growing at over 4% per year, and we need to have the political will to embrace the competition and prepare for the 21st century. I encourage you all to take 12 minutes to listen to the interview. In the light of the economic disaster we’ve experienced, we need to hear his message. It’s sobering, but clearly we can change things around.
Whether in fiction or memoir, in India or Indiana - the struggle, loss of dignity and search for hope in the face of poverty is universal. If we can make changes so that our children will have opportunities to grow in safety and health, to learn and compete in the future global economy, we can fight actual poverty and at the same time overcome our deficit of hope.

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A Year Of Light, Motion and Magic

Posted in Blogging, Miri Market, Woman entrepreneur by Anne

Happy Birthday to me! I began this Light, Motion and Magic blog a year ago - and what a great year it has been! Today I’d like to write a little about what I’ve learned from the blogging experience - and since this blog is all about being a woman entrepreneur starting my business - I’ll outline where my business efforts are right now.

This blogging experience has been terrific. There have been both outward and inward benefits to this blog. I started it because I realized that there is an online community that I would need to understand, reach out to and be a part of if I were ever going to make a success of my online business. That online community is every bit as robust as I thought it would be, and more. The other blogs and bloggers that I’ve followed, those I’ve communicated with in forums, and the additional Twitter community that I engage with has simply become a part of my life now. Yes, it takes up time, but it’s well, well worth it. I have a genuine fondness and respect for the friends I’ve made online, and the times I’ve reached out, I’ve rarely been disappointed.

On an internal level, I can’t overstate how important it has been, as I’ve gone through this business start-up process, to take the time to concentrate my thoughts and experiences as I’ve gone along. Yes, it’s been hard to think of exactly what to write about sometimes, but the effort has always been rewarding, and has often crystallized my thinking, or spurred me to more needed research.

I am very, very glad that I took the leap to try this online format, and I look forward to another year with you!

My latest test of patience in getting Miri Market off the ground is finally drawing to an end. Johannes will be done with the design enhancements soon, which I am very excited to see. After that, I look forward to getting reactions to the concept from people through online surveys and face-to-face research.

The economic conditions in which we find ourselves is going to affect my business decisions, without a doubt. It’s tough enough to get a business off the ground, even without the tremors of a looming economic crisis shaking that very ground. I will continue to move forward very cautiously. Admittedly, getting Miri Market going has been s-l-o-w-w-w-w, but I’ve always believed that the process will unfold as it should, in due time. Perhaps the delays have been a good thing, and I should be grateful that the nervousness of watching the economy this week was not compounded by having a container of new product to launch and sell! These are uncertain times, for sure, highlighting the need to minimize risk and do my research to make sure this is a product that will be well-received.

Thus, I start out on Year Two of this blog. As I proceed with my business plans through the months ahead I will continue to write about my experiences and bring to you my honest observations and insights. I thank all my readers, and I hope you’ll keep stopping by to take this journey with me.

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More on Globalization

Posted in Miri Market, Uncategorized by Anne

I got a long and thoughtful comment last week from concerned citizen, in response to my post Global Learning and the Never-Ending Learning Curve. It was recommended that I look into books that offer a counterperspective to Thomas Friedman’s books.

I really do want to get a balanced perspective, so I have ordered Redefining Global Strategy by Harvard professor Pankaj Ghemawat, and will pick up from the library Making Globalization Work by Joseph Stiglitz. Thanks for the suggestions, concerned citizen!

My eyes and appetite on this subject may be bigger than my time can handle, but I’ll give it a try! I have several of the books already, so my reading begins this week. I’ll certainly be reporting back on what I find.

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman appeared on Letterman on Monday night, talking about his new book on the energy crisis,  Hot, Flat and Crowded. I thought it was a great segment, and you can see it here.

Global Business and the Never-Ending Learning Curve

Posted in Business resources, Woman entrepreneur by Anne

Early in August I wrote about Energy, Globalization and Manufacturing. Today I want to point you in the direction of more interesting information about globalization, and let you know what’s going on my fall business reading list. I’m not only interested in this topic as a woman entrepreneur, I’m just plain interested.

Laurel Delaney at The Global Small Business Blog consistantly brings up good topics connected to small business and globalization. Her blog pointed me to this site: Knowledge@Wharton and their discussion of a book titled: GLOBALITY: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything.

GLOBALITY tells the story of a new era of international business competition. The global challenger companies—that grew up in the rapidly-developing economies—are challenging the big, developed-country corporations that have been globalization leaders for the last two decades. Both challengers and incumbents will find themselves competing with everyone (including former partners and suppliers) from everywhere (in both developed and developing markets) for everything (including customers, talent, and more).

This looks like a good one to put on my reading list.

I also like the Globalization category of Small Business Trends. It has many fine articles, one of the contributors being the above-mentioned Laurel Delaney. Read any of the articles listed and you’ll get thoughtful content about global business.

There is a reference in one of the articles to Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat. This a book I hear about time and time again, and have often told myself, “I have to read it!” And I haven’t, yet. It seems to me that the globalization of business is a trend that is here to stay, so I want to be more informed, making this is a second book that goes on my reading list (along with Friedman’s latest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded.)

I’ve also discovered a new and fascinating rejoinder to Friedman’s The World is Flat, titled  The Entrepreneurial Society, by David Andretsch, from the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneur’s Resource Center. As I mentioned in last week’s post Exciting Entrepreneurship Initiatives, this site is a tremendous source of information, globalization included.

New book by IU’s Audretsch declares business world ‘not flat’

Embracing innovation is the only way for Western businesses to succeed in the global market, says Indiana University economics Professor David Audretsch. In his new book, The Entrepreneurial Society (Oxford University Press). Audretsch argues that labor will continue to be outsourced abroad as long as the tasks involved are routine and replicable, but companies that reward new ideas, niche markets and community collaboration can thrive on local employment.

“If your company’s competitive advantage is based on lowest cost, you’re out of here,” he said. “If you want to stay and thrive in the United States, the focus needs to be on innovation. You need to think of things we’re not doing today.”

Baby boomers have had a difficult time grasping the changes of a globalized economy, he said. They inherited the economic success of the postwar era, in which large corporations were the major employers. Their attempts to follow an outdated formula have led to personal and corporate financial failures, Audretsch said.

Moving beyond the conclusions of Thomas Friedman’s 2005 bestseller The World is Flat, Audretsch argues that business innovation actually occurs in geographical “pockets” such as Silicon Valley software development, fashion in Paris and Milan, and finance in New York. Talent—and wealth—tend to collect in these areas known for cutting-edge development. The solution to the off-shoring dilemma, Audretsch says, lies in identifying community strengths and building these areas as hotbeds of innovation.

“It turns out, ideas and creation of those ideas happen in a proximate way—people gathered together make ideas grow, and to proactively respond you need to be in the same place together. Business innovation functions much like the world of music—the best work happens when you get together and jam,” he said.

This book will have to be added to my globalization reading list, as well!

I know that I’ve only scratched the surface of this topic and I’ve got an ambitious amount to absorb in just what I’ve found so far. But it’s a start, and a reminder that to stay current on the world, and business trends, the learning curve is never-ending.

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Exciting Entrepreneurship Initiatives

Posted in Business resources, Woman entrepreneur by Anne

I took a nice little on-line journey this week…into the world of entrepreneurship initiatives. First I began by checking on information about Global Entrepreneurship Week coming up November 17-23, 2008.

Global Entrepreneurship Week is a combination and expansion of two successful initiatives, the debut of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA in 2007 and the inspiration behind it, Enterprise Week in the UK which was kicked off in 2004 by now-Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

During the last year, these two efforts - led by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in the US and the Make Your Mark campaign in the UK - combined to engage 2,720 partner organizations planning 6,891 activities that directly involved 929,449 individuals.

Thousands of pieces of media coverage amplified the message, reaching tens of millions.

Watch this great, short video about Entrepreneurship Week 2007. I confess I got excited about all the energy, creativity and possibilites unleashed by this project!

Browsing around this site led me to the Imagine it! site where I watched a whole set of videos from a competition during last year’s Entrepreneurship Week. (Incidentally, the host of the video, pictured below, is Iliza Shlesinger who just won NBC’s Last Comic Standing.)

The film, imagine it!, tells the story of college students who participated in a global creativity challenge hosted by Stanford University during EntrepreneurshipWeek USA in 2007. The challenge? Create value using one pack of Post-it notes in just six days. Teams from around the globe including Thailand, Australia, India, Brazil, Colombia, Japan, Ecuador and the United States surprised everyone with what they did—raising and donating money, composing music, helping the disabled, making powerful social statements and educating children.The film captures the spirit of the next generation of entrepreneurs that will be unleashed during Global Entrepreneurship Week, from November 17-23, 2008.

Allow yourself plenty of time to watch the videos-it’s really fun to see what these bright teams came up with!

Which, in turn, led me to the website of the Kauffman Foundation, one of the main sponsors of Entrepreneurship Week. As a woman entrepreneur, there is much on this site of particular help to me.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation was established in the mid-1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the Kauffman Foundation is the 30th largest foundation in the United States with an asset base of approximately $2 billion.

The vision of the Kauffman Foundation is to foster “a society of economically independent individuals who are engaged citizens, contributing to the improvement of their communities.” In service of this vision, and in keeping with our founder’s wishes, the Foundation focuses its grant making and operations on two areas: advancing entrepreneurship and improving the education of children and youth.

There is just loads and loads of great information on this site. Among the most relevant to me is the Entrepreneur’s Resource Center, featuring a wealth of practical articles, written for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.

Finally I found myself back at the Global Entrepreneurship Week site, where I registered as a member and signed up for their newsletter. One of the ways the site recommends becoming involved is to “tell others about the week.” And so I have!

Do some exploring on your own to find out about these terrific entrepreneurship initiatives.

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An Excellent Customer email Strategy

Posted in Miscellany by Anne

Note: Before posting this, I checked online (or on-line?) for the latest thinking about spelling ‘e-mail’ with a hyphen versus spelling ‘email’ without a hyphen. I found interesting articles at The Fiction Desk, Digital Quest and Motivated Grammar. The consensus seems to agree with what I’ve personally been leaning towards: email. But both forms of the word are widely used and accepted, and I’m now going to lay this silly point to rest.

I like staying on the EPM Communications Marketing to Women e-mail list, because I get emails with nice little updated facts. Yes, they’re reminding me to buy their latest research, but they’re also adding to my arsenal of information - an excellent strategy to keep people from “unsubscribing” from your customer emails. Kudos to EPM. This is the latest:

1. 50% of American women and 32% of men say that mass merchandisers are their favorite stores to shop, according to WSL Strategic Retail.
2. 12% of new Harley-Davidson motorcycles are purchased by women.

Are Your Products Catching The Attention Of Today’s Homeowner?

Find the statistics and analysis you need to build a strong foundation for your product development, sales and marketing efforts in “Americans & Their Homes.”

For a complete Table Of Contents or to order your copy go to: http://www.epmcom.com/homes


3. 48% of women 35-49 say price-related offers from stores are the primary reason they choose one store over another, reports Vertis Communications.
4. 27% of mothers say nutritional content is their top consideration when buying groceries for their children; the kids preferences are the top consideration for 22%, notes pasta manufacturer Ronzoni.
5. 35.3 million moms are online, estimates eMarketer’s Debra Aho Williamson.

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End-Of-Summer Blues

Posted in Miscellany by Anne

This time in mid-August I always become acutely aware that summer is drawing to an end. It is darker in the morning, dusk falls earlier. The cicadas’ drone brings back a lifetime of memories of back-to-school shopping and State Fair visits. A familiar dread of the march of time towards winter takes hold.

In the work/life balance of things, I give special weight to the life part now, and try to grab hold of every moment possible. So enjoy this beautiful poem, and try to take time in the next few weeks to savor this singular, sweet, fleeting time of year.

THE END OF SUMMER

The summer days are fading, as they must
From endless hours to short and fleeting light
The bird’s once bright, immortal tune, now cries
A melancholy aura to the dusk
The children fiercely climb, and dream, and race
Before their wild and unchained days depart
And yet beneath the zeal lies a half heart
For there isn’t time, there’s only enough space
The sun seems low, a hazy orange sphere
Now reminiscing sweetly of the days
When endlessly before you summer lay
And as in the deep, crimson dusk you stir
Your soul joins with the birds in wistful brood
Crying for lost summer days, for childhood

by Shannon Georgia Schaubroeck

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